Australians have taken to solar energy, but much of the electricity they generate cannot be stored and is returned back to the grid. However, commercial residential battery systems are now available, with new technologies on the horizon.

Despite the rapid uptake of solar and wind energy worldwide, fossil fuels are still required when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. However, a cheap and proven storage option, in combination with wind and solar energy, could replace the need for fossil fuels within 15 years.

Solar panels structured like a chessboard, where the white squares are slightly raised compared with the black squares, could reduce the cost of tracking the sun, helping to spread energy generation more evenly throughout the day.

An Australian inventor has produced a series of solar-powered vehicles that he hopes will take the developing world by storm. The first models are already for sale, and mass production will begin in March 2014.

Modest-sized solar thermal plants could save almost $1 billion in investment that is otherwise required to upgrade electricity transmission to regional towns, with major reductions in carbon emissions a bonus.

Landholders are adamant that coal seam gas is contaminating their groundwater, but natural geological processes make their accusations difficult to prove. Now science is starting to fill in the cracks.

There is a new entrant in one of the great races of our times – the quest to find cheap ways to store electricity. Murdoch University scientists believe they have the answer in the form of sodium ion batteries.

Adelaide ecologists Prof Barry Brook and Prof Corey Bradshaw have called for the promotion of nuclear power to mitigate climate change and protect biodiversity in an open letter published in Conservation Biology.

Telecommunications expert Dr Kerry Hinton explains how the growth in consumer and business cloud computing, and the mobile and wireless technologies that support it, is driving massive increases in power consumption.

Materials scientist Prof David Sholl explains how new hi-tech metal hydrides and metal-organic frameworks can be used to increase the efficiency of nuclear power stations and to capture carbon dioxide emissions in coal-fired power plants.

Perth trial finds few technological barriers to the adoption of electric vehicles in Australia, but government incentives for early adopters and government programs for the roll-out of fast-DC charging stations would help Australia fully embrace these cars.

Researchers are developing a new kind of geothermal power plant that will lock away unwanted carbon dioxide (CO2) underground – and use it as a tool to boost electric power generation by at least 10 times compared to existing geothermal energy approaches.